How was life before hammarabis code
Answers
Answer:
1. It’s not the earliest known code of laws.
The Code of Hammurabi is often cited as the oldest written laws on record, but they were predated by at least two other ancient codes of conduct from the Middle East. The earliest, created by the Sumerian ruler Ur-Nammu of the city of Ur, dates all the way back to the 21st century B.C., and evidence also shows that the Sumerian Code of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin was drawn up nearly two centuries before Hammurabi came to power. These earlier codes both bear a striking resemblance to Hammurabi’s commands in their style and content, suggesting they may have influenced one another or perhaps even derived from a similar source.
2. The Code included many bizarre and gruesome forms of punishment.
Hammurabi’s Code is one of the most famous examples of the ancient precept of “lex talionis,” or law of retribution, a form of retaliatory justice commonly associated with the saying “an eye for an eye.” Under this system, if a man broke the bone of one his equals, his own bone would be broken in return. Capital crimes, meanwhile, were often met with their own unique and grisly death penalties. If a son and mother were caught committing incest, they were burned to death; if a pair of scheming lovers conspired to murder their spouses, both were impaled. Even a relatively minor crime could earn the offender a horrific fate. For example, if a son hit his father, the Code demanded the boy’s hands be “hewn off.”
For crimes that could not be proven or disproven with hard evidence (such as claims of sorcery), the Code allowed for a “trial by ordeal”—an unusual practice where the accused was placed in a potentially deadly situation as a way of determining innocence. The Code notes that if an accused man jumps into the river and drowns, his accuser “shall take possession of his house.” However, if the gods spared the man and allowed him to escape unhurt, the accuser would be executed, and the man who jumped in the river would receive his house.
Explanation:
3. The laws varied according to social class and gender.
Hammurabi’s Code took a brutal approach to justice, but the severity of criminal penalties often depended on the identity of both the lawbreaker and the victim. While one law commanded, “If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out,” committing the same crime against a member of a lower class was punished with only a fine. Other rank-based penalties were even more significant. If a man killed a pregnant “maid-servant,” he was punished with a monetary fine, but if he killed a “free-born” pregnant woman, his own daughter would be killed as retribution. The Code also listed different punishments for men and women with regard to marital infidelity. Men were allowed to have extramarital relationships with maid-servants and slaves, but philandering women were to be bound and tossed into the Euphrates along with their lovers.